GROUP GEARS UP TO HELP BUSINESS

MainStreet Oceanside hopes to showcase downtown attractions

A downtown Oceanside business group is ramping up its drive to promote the city, attract new businesses, and help existing shops and restaurants grow and prosper.

“With redevelopment gone, somebody has to step into the vacuum, and we hope to do a little bit of it, anyway,” said Rick Wright, executive director of MainStreet Oceanside, an organization that works to showcase downtown, mostly through special events and marketing.

“We’ve been spending a lot of time and effort creating great activities that bring lots of people downtown. In doing so, we feel we haven’t been paying as much attention to the downtown businesses,” Wright said. “We’d just like to see new businesses downtown, some new restaurants maybe, so we can fill some of the vacancies.”

As a start, MainStreet is teaming up with California State University San Marcos to conduct a survey to find out just how many people do business downtown, what they sell and what they might need to improve, said Gumaro Escarcega, the former executive director of the Vista Village Business Association who came to MainStreet Oceanside in January to become its program director.

“This gives us the opportunity to reach out to businesses we don’t know about,” Escarcega said.

The overview of existing businesses also will give community leaders an idea of what might be lacking downtown.

For instance, Escarcega said, before the survey is even finished, it has become clear that the city could use one or more new upscale restaurants.

“We want to offer the right restaurants, more retail shops so people can shop here,” Escarcega said. “There’s a huge opportunity in Oceanside where businesses can become profitable.”

The last time a count was taken in 2010, Wright said, there were about 530 businesses in a downtown area bordered by Horne Street to the west, the Pacific Ocean to the east, Oceanside Harbor to the north and the city’s boundary with Carlsbad to the south.

Since then, several new businesses have opened downtown, while others have been forced to close because of a sagging economy.

Besides cataloging what’s already downtown, Escarcega said, MainStreet wants to help downtown businesses work together on common problems and to spruce up the area.

“We want to make sure that we build a line of communication with the businesses,” Escarcega said.

For the last few years, MainStreet Oceanside’s focus has been on developing the weekly Sunset Market that draws about 150 vendors downtown from 5 to 9 p.m. Thursdays, as well as a farmers market that runs from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. each Thursday.

MainStreet also sponsors the city’s annual Independence Day Parade on the Saturday preceding July 4.

The job of attracting more businesses downtown and helping those already here had previously fallen to the city, but with cutbacks at City Hall and the demise of Oceanside’s redevelopment agency, private groups like MainStreet have to pick up the slack, Wright said.

“We’re hearing from downtown businesses that things seem to be getting a little bit better,” he said.

MainStreet’s actions also were prompted by an apparent resurgence of interest in downtown among investors, including the ongoing construction of a new SpringHill Suites hotel and plans to revive a hotel project on Mission Avenue and Horne Street.

The city’s plans to improve Mission Avenue downtown by narrowing the street and widening sidewalks to make it more inviting also have renewed a sense of optimism about the area, Escarcega said.

“With these changes and street improvements, it will definitely make a nice, pedestrian-friendly neighborhood,” Escarcega said. “That’s what businesses want to see; they want to see activity downtown.”